hmm Jersey cops… I see they are sending Ob into NJ for Corzine. I assume the CW on the street is that Corzine squeaks out a “win”.

Carry on… what else to say. What waits for Corzine? A sex scandal (and they are so dreary, as they keep rolling out)?? … a pay-for-play scandal (more drear)? Union bagmen scandal (dreary!)? Another union babe mini scandal (double drear!)?

I can hardly wait…….. not.

*****

More (late in the day I posted a long comment in the last thread) of theJane Mayer New Yorker interview which IS online, unlike her big article on the great expansion of drone sorties over Pakistan under The Peace Prize (those poor fucked up Norwegians).

How does the continued collateral damage from Predator drones square with General Stanley McChrystal’s order to the military to lay off the air strikes in Afghanistan and avoid civilian deaths?

Well, you could argue it either way. There is less collateral damage from a drone strike than there is from an F-16. According to intelligence officials, drones are more surgical in the way they kill—they usually use Hellfire missiles and do less damage than a fighter jet might. . . . .

Oh, let’s have some more of that…

If the C.I.A. doesn’t have experience killing people, who is piloting the drones?

It doesn’t take as much talent or experience or training to pilot a drone as it does to pilot a real plane. The skills are much like what you need to do well in a video game. And the C.I.A. has outsourced a lot of the drone piloting, which also raises interesting legal questions, because you not have only civilians running this program, but you may have people who are not even in the U.S. government piloting the drones.

You mention in your piece that drone pilots, who work from an office, suffer from combat stress.

Someone sitting at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Virginia, can view and home in on a target on the other side of the world with tremendous precision, even at night, and destroy it. Peter Singer, who wrote a book on robotic warfare, said that cubicle warriors experience the same stress as regular warriors in a real war. Detached killing still takes a tremendous emotional toll inside our borders. . . . .

Weep for them. Copiously.. so it gets noticed.

Meanwhile, keep breathing while waiting for The Big Transparency from The Peace Prize:

What would the outlines of a more transparent drone program look like?

Michael Walzer, the political philosopher, has noted that when the United States goes about killing people, we usually know who they can kill and where the battlefield is. International lawyers are calling for a public revelation of who is on this list, where can we go after them, and how many people can we take out with them. They want to know the legal, ethical, and political boundaries of the program.

****

Updatevia TimesOnline on the Catholic M&A, LBO, whatever it is, of the Anglican dissidents.

Good comment from the thread…

Ros Roberts wrote:

You’re an Anglican? You want to become a Catholic? Nothing easier: all you have to do is completely change what you believe in: take on board transubstantiation, Papal infallibility, purgatory, things like that.

But if that is so easy for these people, why don’t they simply decide to believe that women are people too and can be bishops too?

[T]he facts of Kathleen O’Malley’s life would probably not have been believed ten years ago, not before the dam finally burst on the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.

A long-awaited report into clerical abuse in the Diocese of Dublin is expected to be published this week and bishops are bracing themselves for another round of public anger. It will be a horror story of how known paedophile priests were shunted from parish to parish by their religious seniors. The number of children who suffered as a result of the Church’s cover-up could run into thousands.

It will also be another shattering blow to the moral authority of an institution that once ruled Ireland with an iron rod, following hard on the heels of the Ryan report, an independent tribunal that concluded in May after a decade of evidence-gathering that there had been “endemic and systemic” sexual, physical and emotional abuse of hundreds of thousands of Irish children in residential institutions run by religious orders. Four years ago, when Kathleen first told her story in her memoir, Childhood Interrupted, there were plenty of cynics around who were prepared to cast doubt on the extraordinary tale of suffering inside a system that seemed akin to the worst excesses of a totalitarian regime. . . . . .

What “blow to the moral authority”? Where is that blow?

As a mirror to the concrete entombment of the so-called political class (withhold the vote, FFS!) the ONLY thing the Church responds to is LESS MONEY in the collection plate and, FFS, withhold the children.

People won’t do that… They continue to fork over (really) the children to an abusive system. With or without ritual sexual abuse.

[T]hat is small consolation for Kathleen O’Malley. “I don’t know at what point the religious gained their power, but they had total power and autonomy to do as they wanted. We were brainwashed to say that we were well-looked after.”

…

She is scornful of the progress Ireland is making towards righting these heinous wrongs. “They say they now want to put up a monument to all those who were treated badly. They had a garden party with the President of Ireland, to which around 130 victims were invited, but I wasn’t and neither were thousands of others. And that was like my evidence to the Ryan commission, which was ignored. I was never given the opportunity.” . . . .

Reporting from Washington – Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told Congress on Wednesday that delays in the release of H1N1 flu shots show that the United States is too dependent on other countries for the manufacture of vaccines and that the technology to make them must be improved.

Four of the five manufacturers of H1N1 vaccines are foreign companies — a fact that alarmed lawmakers, who expressed concern about the ability of the federal government to secure enough vaccine to prevent the spread of the virus, known as swine flu. . . . .

yes…. Arne Duncan’s triumphant statements of a few weeks ago of vaccines distribution in ALL the schools … has gone to radio silence.

San Jose had planned to free vaccinate in the schools (it seems every county had a different plan, not that it matters now) and has had to abandon that …. LA planned a series of free vaccination events open to anyone, abandoned.

Etc.

Yes Arne and Ob are curiously silent… they send out Dr Schuchat… a number 2 or three at CDC I think, to make the “we can’t…”, “we don’t … ” announcements.

oh I agree…. as I saw it the media was used to really ram it home to parents who have issues with the vaccine…. esp as a few docs/pediatricians who say (in their opinion) the course of the illness has so far proved too mild to feel pressured to take the vaccine.

Those few docs are nowhere to be seen this week. LOL… and i have read that pregnant women are not lining up for it, but the ptb are not anxious to brow beat them in public.

And right, where is the vaccine? Not that things cannot get complicated (producing millions of vaccine) but Ob and Arne and others crowed about it all just a couple fo months ago.

So, per the the Turley in the last thread, would Ms. O’Malley be in trouble for attacking a religious institution for pointing out their systematic applying of their fleshy rods to the defenseless bodies of children?

Silber on Obama’s comments about Donks being an “an opinionated bunch”, but now it’s time to shut up and go along:

Obama here engages in a fundamental dishonesty, as he simultaneously counts on everyone to ignore the glaring fraud he commits right in front of them. Most people are happy to play along. In the manner of a happily self-deluded crowd gathered around a street-corner hustler, those who seek personal fulfillment and self-gratification in political pursuits are not overly insistent on honesty or integrity. Obama praises his audience and Democrats generally for “thinking for yourselves” — and then immediately insists that they must recognize that what he himself identifies as a major virtue must not be taken too far. After all, we must “finish the job here.” And: “We are this close.” Therefore, “we’ve got to be unified.”

As a general rule — and at the moment, I am unable to think of a single exception — when a politician engages in a hard sell on the determinative importance of “unity,” he’s conning you big-time. It’s great that you’re independent and that you think for yourself — but don’t do any more of that right now. Now, you have to do exactly what I say.

The White House isn’t taking up most of the chairs in Harry’s Reid’s meetings just to watch him make decisions on his own. They’re there to make sure Harry Reid doesn’t undo the White House deals and wander off the reservation.

I have finally come to understand why I cannot talk about politics, terrorism or international relations with my father, not that it matters much, except as a glimpse of a much larger phenomenon.

It’s not just my father. I can’t talk about politics or terrorism or world affairs with anyone who has lived his or her entire life under the great umbrella of American propaganda.

They have insulated themselves under an enormous web of lies, and hidden themselves away from actual knowledge of their nation and its role in the world, both of which they see dimly, if at all: the world as a dark, dangerous, mysterious place, and their nation as the best of all nations — nay, the best of all possible nations.

They have been content to collect the scraps tossed their way by the American War Machine, although they would never call it that. Nor would they ever consider themselves in any way complicit in America’s endless war on the rest of the world, a war they never even acknowledge.

It’s a war waged on multiple planes, of which the military, being the bloodiest, is easily the most visible. And it didn’t start last week, or last year, or even eight years ago.

It’s been going on all their lives — or since they were little kids. For an ever-increasing percentage of America’s population, it’s always been there.

Like the land, the sea and the sky, it’s the backdrop against which their lives take place.

Only a fool would question the sea and sky.

… or the notion that the American War Machine should be what it is, and is what it should be.

Except that it’s not true. None of it is true. And even worse — they know it’s not true.

As long as every little lie stays in place, the umbrella stands, so to speak: the big lies remain sacred, so to speak. But once you start to pull and tug, and separate one lie from another, and expose them to the light of knowledge and reason … well, that’s where it gets intolerable.

WASHINGTON — Democrats lost a big test vote on health care legislation on Wednesday as the Senate blocked action on a bill to increase Medicare payments to doctors at a cost of $247 billion over 10 years.

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, needed 60 votes to proceed. He won only 47. And he could not blame Republicans. A dozen Democrats and one independent crossed party lines and voted with Republicans on the 53 to 47 roll call.

The Medicare bill has become a proxy for larger issues in the debate over legislation to overhaul the health care system.

Mr. Reid said the bill, by averting big cuts in physician fees, guaranteed that doctors would continue accepting Medicare patients. But since none of the costs were offset or paid for, Republicans said it was fiscally irresponsible, and some Democrats said they shared that concern. . . . . . .

Republicans have spent several days making Stabenow and others look like fools as they blithered along over this bill. It was bound to pick up someone like Feingold agaisnt it, as it was a mess of a bill.

Democrats had hoped that by passing the Medicare bill they could appease doctors and secure their support for the broader legislation.

Senate Democratic leaders said the bill to protect doctors’ fees had strong support from the White House, the American Medical Association and AARP.

Among the Democrats who voted against the party leadership were Senators Evan Bayh of Indiana, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Bill Nelson of Florida and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

“I will vote for the doctor fix — when it is funded,” Mr. Nelson said. . . . . .

Meanwhile, they are going to hammered in Virginia.
What does the Tell You?
HONEYMOON OVER. Where’s the CHANGE OBAMA? Tsk tsk tsk. Campaigning for Wall Street Pillagers.

The Macker and Bill C got barely a few hundred in a cramped and stuffy room at a DNC hq in NORTHERN Va… think it ws Sunday night or Monday. No VA was supposed to be bluer (Peoples’ Republic of Arlington and all that) than purple (they wish) “rest of the state”. Didn’t last long.

No word on crowd size but the pics for Obs venue showed a smaller gym.I’m at that point where I lose what little objectivity I have left…I’m just all about whatever Heel is in, knock him out..Is it me or does that WaPo sound like the WH is lowering the expectations?.Seems very concilliatory over Corzines weakness. One tid I thought was funny from Vick in WaPo was characterizing Hope for Corzine based on a grimacing clergyman and women chosen as backdrops ON STAGE..

Will it all rouse the party faithful?

From Walter Carlson, 75, seated on a bleacher to the left of the podium, the answer was a grimace. “Hopefully,” said the retired Episcopal clergyman.

Another hope was evident in the on-stage seating: Four rows of women — and only women — were arrayed behind Obama and Corzine. Many wore pink stickers reading “Mammos Matter,” a slogan embraced the Corzine campaign embraced after Christie suggested that the state should no longer require health insurers to cover mammograms. The Democrat found in the statement an issue with the potential to move votes his way, according to analysts.

“As the race has tightened, it’s really white women who have made up the difference,” said Peter J. Woolley, executive director of Farleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll.

They were also pushing the Martin Jack and Bobby thing heavily today …Some security guard up at the airport detained for threats..

The incumbent, a multi-millionaire who served with Obama in the U.S. senate, remains saddled with approval ratings in the low 30s and his association with the state’s property taxes, which are historically high but especially galling to homeowners when the housing market craters.

Oh please? They served together in the senate. What a joke.

If Corzine loses then Ob ws dropped into NJ as part of the overall government deal wtih G-Saxe. It was demanded.

One other thing tho..
the Independent wimmens aren’t flocking to Dagget.
The issue is the two million Independent and unaffiliated voters.

At least 5.2 million New Jerseyans are eligible to vote in the Nov. 3 general election, according to the latest state registration figures, including 1.7 million Democrats, 1.06 million Republicans and 2.3 million unaffiliated people

People like me come out with any force, on current Splits…
Corzine and Ob get slapped..
Crickets as to what’s going on between the Dem Machine factions..Codey v the S. Jersey crew who toppled him last week as Sen Pres in Trenton…

I did some diggin on his bio …
his Tech Start up , a Tel Com runup….sold to Liberty Media..All the right VC at the right time…He’s in an R+5 District around Orlando..The Congressman from Disney..among other fantastic international locations..
Best communications operation going… A total Scam.
But hey – he’s Newish!

HOWEVER, one thing I noted a couple fo days ago when this bone to the left rolled out… it was also announced that the raids, arrests and so on earlier this year on Med MJ facilities and small growers will not be dropped.

[E]shoo’s successful amendment to the Energy and Commerce Committee bill would extend that to 12 years of exclusivity, as would legislation passed a few weeks earlier by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. Then-chairman Ted Kennedy, whose state of Massachusetts is home to many biotech firms, had long supported a 12-year exclusivity period. The industry showed its gratitude last year when Amgen, one of the biggest biotech firms, donated $5 million — twice the size of the next largest donation — to a nonprofit educational institute being built in Kennedy’s honor.

Yup fought for health care for 40 + years… Holding the hand of the likes of Amgen.

AND according to the article, Waxman, who wanted shorter term of exclusivity on Biologic drugs (5 years) tried for a voice vote, but Eshoo pushed for roll call, so Pharma could have a list of who voted with them.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — In the end, pay czar Kenneth Feinberg’s hardest case was AIG.

The troubled insurer lobbied hard to let three of its executives keep their bonuses.

AIG told Feinberg that three executives, who were entitled to large retention payments, were particularly critical to the company’s long-term financial success and should be able to keep their bonuses.

Feinberg said Thursday that he relented in the case of AIG even though he was able to pare down similar pay clauses at the other six companies in his purview. . . . . .

An amendment that would prevent the government from working with contractors who denied victims of assault the right to bring their case to court is in danger of being watered down or stripped entirely from a larger defense appropriations bill.

Multiple sources have told the Huffington Post that Sen. Dan Inouye, a longtime Democrat from Hawaii, is considering removing or altering the provision, which was offered by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and passed by the Senate several weeks ago.

Inouye’s office, sources say, has been lobbied by defense contractors adamant that the language of the Franken amendment would leave them overly exposed to lawsuits and at constant risk of having contracts dry up. The Senate is considering taking out a provision known as the Title VII claim, which (if removed) would allow victims of assault or rape to bring suit against the individual perpetrator but not the contractor who employed him or her.

“The defense contractors have been storming his office,” said a source with knowledge of the situation. “Inouye either will get the amendment taken out altogether, or water it down significantly. If they water it down, they will take out the Title VII claims. This means that in discrimination cases, they will still force you into a secret forced arbitration on KBR’s (or other contractors’) own terms — with your chances of prevailing practically zero. The House seems to be very supportive of the original Franken amendment and all in line, but their hands are tied since it originated in the Senate. And since Inouye runs the show on this bill, he can easily take it out to get Republicans and the defense contractors off his back, which looks increasingly likely.”

A Democratic aide on the Hill, also with knowledge of the situation, confirmed the account, as did a source who works on defense contracting matters outside of Congress. “The contractors are putting on a full-court press on this amendment… they are all doing it,” said the latter source.

What the hell is the “Robust” Public Option???
Poor McJoan.
Marketing the nonexistant “Robusto” like it’s some
overwhelmingly satisfying Gigundo Burger on offer for a limited time only. Cooked up by…and to be enjoyed with…
. ..your Imaginary Friends!!

Fuckin ridiculous. Aw, Joanie…Think of it when you have that Heart Attack while choking on it.

Always with the modifier, too..The “Robusto” PO, where, in the eye of the beholder…it can be argued> its almost / pretty much / about like that line in the sand drawn by the fluffers this summer..Like “Hunter”..

So I am done. It is this fight, or nothing. We have been asked to put up with war crimes, < —
{ AND YOU DID! Maybe they'll give you Healthcare! } -BhhM

because “moving forward” is the more conciliatory path. We have been asked to stomach the politicization of the highest offices in our system of justice, because investigating it would be divisive. Time and time again we have asked for nothing more than our government to enforce its own goddamned laws, or to take action against the worst and most corrupt abusers of its citizens, whether done by government or by balance sheet, and we have gotten between nothing and jack-squat in return. We have gotten worse than nothing: we have gotten corporate immunity for lawbreakers, we have gotten tacit approval of the methods of murdering thugs, we have set in stone the notion that there is absolutely no corporate fuckup so damaging to the economy of the entire nation that it would result in substantive regulatory restraints.

No more. This fight is the last and final test; whether or not our leaders are so corrupt as to be irredeemable should be easily gleanable by whether or not they are able to bring themselves to even try on this, the one fight that every last one of them has supposedly been saving their strength for. It is this or nothing, and I will be damn proud, at the end of it, to abandon those who have so completely abandoned us.

He means it. He Really REALLY Does This Time™..LOL.
Until its time for him and his still_with_it Donks tochow down on “The Rubusto” .
Poor FORAGER …hunting around in an empty burger box.
They done boosted The Robusto.

Hundreds of Afghans living in Britain face being deported after immigration judges ruled that their home country’s bloody conflict did not make the region an unsafe place to return failed asylum-seekers.

The test ruling opens the way for deportation flights to southern parts of the war-torn country where thousands of civilians have lost their lives since the toppling of the Taliban in 2001.

Three judges of the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal ruled on Wednesday that the level of “indiscriminate violence” was not enough to permit Afghans to claim general humanitarian protection in the United Kingdom. Hundreds of asylum-seekers a year are returned to Afghanistan if they have not convinced a court they are in fear of persecution or that their lives are in danger. The ruling on Wednesday prevents them from arguing that the country is a dangerous place.

So.

At Thursday's debate, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren defended their Medicare for All plan. They faced criticism from several rivals, including Senator Amy Klobuchar, who described it as a "bad idea," and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who claimed the bill shows Sanders and Warren do not "trust the American people."

At the third presidential primary debate in Houston, Texas, senator and 2020 candidate Elizabeth Warren called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Warren also spoke about her stance on U.S. trade policy and how "our trade policy in America has been broken for decades."

After being questioned about the crisis in Venezuela, Senator Bernie Sanders defended his vision of democratic socialism. "I agree with what goes on in Canada and in Scandinavia: guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right. I believe that the United States should not be the only major country on Earth not to provide paid family and medical le […]

Debate moderator Jorge Ramos of Univision grilled former Vice President Joe Biden over the Obama administration's deportation record. Biden refused to answer whether he did anything to prevent Obama from deporting a record 3 million people.

A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Friday demanded internal emails, detailed financial information and other company records from top executives of Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc, Apple Inc, and Alphabet Inc's Google, widening the antitrust probe of Big Tech.

U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Friday asked a government watchdog to look into the Trump administration's decision to launch an antitrust probe into four automakers cooperating with California on tighter greenhouse gas emissions limits that Trump is trying to eliminate.

A lawyer for former FBI official Andrew McCabe pressed U.S. prosecutors on Friday to drop their politically sensitive case against him, citing reports that suggest they may be having trouble securing criminal charges.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.